


five strips of ribbon (i've found)

by Oboeist3



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode 22: Colony, mentions of Jon and Tim, there was supposed to be a plot but it turned into character analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oboeist3/pseuds/Oboeist3
Summary: "Martin Blackwood is not going to be able to sleep. He knows that. He imagines anyone with a working brain knows that."AKA The aftermath of being attacked by a worm lady
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	five strips of ribbon (i've found)

**Author's Note:**

> cw: some mild suicidal ideation(ish) and a hint of fatphobia if you squint

Martin Blackwood is not going to be able to sleep. He knows that. He imagines anyone with a working brain knows that. He lies in the shitty camp bed in a humidity controlled room that doesn't actually do that anyway. It feels...like the sort of thing he was supposed to do. Like making a statement had been. 

Procedure, Jon would've called it. Going through the minutia of things for the sake of rules that have always felt very far away to Martin. He likes Jon. He thinks he's charming and brilliant and sort of wonderful, even though he's also a bastard. He also actually has a degree in...something, so Martin figures his best chance at seeming like the accredited individual on his C.V. is to follow his lead. 

He's not sure if Jon would be able to sleep or not. He's not an emotionless robot. Though Tim's impression with the mechanical RP and the upturned chin has a certain thematic accuracy to it. Especially the clipped way he says 'thank you.' Like the words are a sour taste he has to get out of his mouth as soon as possible. 

Maybe it's pointless to think about this. He's not Jon. He's not anything like him. The only thing they have in common is this place and a similar taste in tea. Even that's a bit of a stretch. Martin's just not picky about it. He'll drink it bitter and he'll drink it with sugar and he'll always have at least one more biscuit with it than he ought to. Maybe being here will be good for that. He doubts the razor-thin head archivist has a secret stash of Jammie Dodgers. 

It's not that he dislikes how big he is, it makes sense. The men in his family, they've always been like this. Tall and wide and round. It's not doing him a disservice or anything. His liver and pancreas and spleen probably, they all work fine. 

It's just, moments like these. When he's scared and he feels stupid about it, he wishes he was smaller. That way when he curls up, he can pretend the universe might take pity on him, let him blip out of existence. He knows it's possible. He's read enough statements of people who were never found. Energy now. Stardust. Isn't that sort of lovely?

Of course, that doesn't happen. Instead, the hinges on the camp bed groan, and he feels something tickle at the nape of his neck. It's his hair. He knows that. He's not stupid. His heart doesn't seem to have gotten that memo. It races in his chest, and his lungs pull in more air to compensate. He starts thinking about skittery legs and shiny carapaces and burrowing. 

Rows and rows of pitted holes, except that wasn't right, they weren't organized like that. They curved and contorted and ran into each other. They looked oddly brittle, like - like if you pressed your fingers against it. Her. **It** would just collapse into pieces, letting the worms go everywhere and -

Martin gets up. All of a sudden, being in the bed doesn't feel any better than the alternative. 

He walks out of his new makeshift bedroom, begins a meandering wander. He doesn't usually pay attention to the actual structure of the Magnus Institute, too busy working in it, but it really does feel ancient. It's not that old, not for England, not even for London. Tim could tell him exactly when all the individual elements of the structure came into architectural fashion, but the reality isn't important. 

It's all perception, all about the feeling of things. His coworkers, they don't seem to put a lot of stock in that. They break down each statement into assertions that can be verified, cross-checked with the housing board and the police. And then once they're done, they move on to the next one. Martin can't do that. He can keep working, but he doesn't move on. 

He remembers the names of people. He thinks about them, about how their lives kept going forward after what happened. If he knows they didn't make it, he's mournful. He'll find himself looking down at his microwaved meal, hours after he's left the Institute, and remember that he's alive and this person he would never have otherwise known about? They're dead. 

Almost certainly that's why his coworkers act like that. Keeping a distance. Making it all about authenticity, and filing the worst moments of people's lives away with order and method. Professionals, every one of them. He's not. Not for his lack of a university degree or archiving experience.

It's because Martin Blackwood cares about people. He cares about how they felt, how they lost their lives. He looks at almost two centuries of statements, and he doesn't see a logistical nightmare, a series of problems to be solved. He sees evidence of all the people who came before him. _People_ , who deserve to have their stories remembered. 

In the real world, he sees a glint of moonlight on metal in the corner of his eye. Scissors, left haphazardly on someone's desk, slightly ajar. His thinks about the hair lying flat and unbuglike against his neck. Thinks about how he'll be scared again anyway. Grabs them and heads towards the bathroom.

He cries as he hacks it off, strand by strand. He's not super attached to his hair or anything. It's just the first time he felt like he could since he left his flat. He cries for Lietner book victims and Hilltop road, for the buried alive and the freefalling. He cries for Jane Prentiss, the woman, not the thing that goaded him through the door. 

Martin cries for himself, because he's going to keep doing this. He's going to stay, and maybe he's going to die, and all he can hope for is that maybe Jon will say something nice about him at the end of the statement about it. 

Until then, he goes back to the shitty camp bed, in a room without humidity control, and doesn't sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> my first foray into tma and the first thing i've written in like six months. is it good? idk but at least it's done now


End file.
